My game started off with running over to a glowing spear, then being attacked by jackals, and equipping the spear after running out of mana, only to find out it was a cursed spear with -1, -3. I survived, then found book of the warp and a dagger of elec. things are looking up.

To all new players: Ignore all strategy guides posted on the wiki, ask questions in the Advice forum, players with lots of posts normally have the best advice.

Nope, you're fine. Sequell will still report all of your games of course, but my scoring sheet is already equipped to handle this - it will only look at your first one (or two) completed games for each challenge. I anticipated that some people wouldn't be content to just kill off their char and walk away.

"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessaDid I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!

Had a rather Odd game, as I never found a wand of digging, cloak of preservation, amulet of conservation, wand of teleport, or a book with Firestorm or Sticky Flame.

Was fortuitously granted fireball quite early in the game which pretty much sealed things. Hardest part of the game for me was Depths:5, which was just completely insane. Must have killed 50 draconians there over the course of an hour or so, and burned through all of my scrolls of teleport and potions of healing. That left me with exactly one teleport for Zot, which I ended up using.

I wanted to go after Geryon, but without controlled blink, teleport, or a storm spell, I decided not to.

"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessaDid I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!

CRAP! Who the F#$% filled Labyrinth with a bunch of f#$%ing monsters and invisible stalkers?

"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessaDid I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!

Miskeying or misjudgement is quite punitive, but it's also the interest of this challenge. Due to heavy changes in my life atm, i have less time to play, but the challenge teach me to be more... accurate? prudent? well, better player :p

ackack wrote:Snake and Swamp have gotten considerably harder; don't know if that should affect things or not, but it probably makes a big difference if you're not through them yet. I sure wish I hadn't updated.

Indeed, if you have a game in progress I might also recommend not updating. Those of us who haven't started yet will just have to take the changes into account.

Somehow the code block that would cause the drowned soul call to begin mysteriously vanished between the effect originally being coded and tested and now. Even I am not sure what happened to it, and the reflog hasn't helped. My best guess is that somehow it was accidentally deleted along with nearby debugging code, maybe?

I think the original code determining song duration here was more involved, but I cannot remember it. This will at least allow it to function, and might well be good enough as-is.

Unlike potion and scroll destruction, there is scarcely any plausible way this could deprive someone of a needed item - food is simply far too abundant for it to matter, and individual food items almost completely interchangeable. Yet, despite having essentially no mechanical benefit, it caused frustration and annoyance to many people.

This combination of trivial gameplay impact and widespread annoyance seem to me a good reason to remove this superfluous gimmick from what is otherwise a solid and threatening monster; harpies will be plenty notable without it.

This adds both plain salamanders as well as mystics and firebrands to the lava tables for Depths, with liberal use of MONS_NO_MONSTER to thin overall numbers quite a bit, given that individual monsters will be much stronger than worthless lava worms and such.

Naga mages and warriors show up more often, but on shallow floors have a chance to spawn alone instead of in a band. Salamanders are able to show up in naga bands in place of plain naga (with low frequency). Guardian serpent bands focus moreso on melee-capable creatures than ranged ones and are larger (but the serpents themselves rarer). Sharpshooters get smaller bands that often contain other sharpshooters instead of other professional naga (but can still show up as a support in other bands). Ritualists get bands of snakes instead of naga (with more common use of mana vipers than elsewhere). Anacondas are more common in general, and greater naga somewhat more common outside of the rune vault (though they still do not come with a band). Salamander mystics will sometimes accompany a naga band (though are the rarest support) and even more rarely spawn alone with a couple salamanders. Shock serpents are also a mid-range encounter at moderate frequency.

Since there is a lot of experimental content at work here at once, these weights are most definitely provisional. I fully expect them to need some revisions in fairly short order (along with some of the monsters themselves, perhaps), but this is a least a starting point.

Stat-wise, they were extremely similar to lava worms (just slightly weaker) - so much so that I see no reason for them to exist given that they don't even really show up in the very narrow earlygame window where you might be able to even notice the differences between the two.

Where lava fish occured, I have mostly replaced them directly with worms, barring a minor exception or two.

Even in a branch where most of the monsters naturally resist it, the friendly fire can be problematic (around, say, anacondas, and now also salamanders and shock serpents), and without being able to liberally use this spell, naga ritualists suffer greatly. Let's just assume that their explicitly esoteric magics have found an answer to this problem, and go with an implementation that plays better.

This also simplifies tracer logic, since it can simply check only for the presence of susceptible hostiles and not the balance between those and friendlies.

These are offense/support casters intended for use both in a revised Snake population and in Depths salamander bands. They currently possess bolt of magma, haste other, single-target ignite poison, and mystic blast (though I am less sold on the last spell; I simply haven't found a better replacement yet - and hey, the name fits!).

Their ability to haste allies partially replaces the former Naga Enchanters's role in Snake, while also working to aid the slow-moving salamanders in other deep lava encounters. Localized ignite poison is a potentially interesting combo for their placement in Snake, being able to inflict decent AC/EV-ignoring damage if you've let yourself get poisoned by some other source. Bolt of magma and IMB round out the package with some simple direct damage. (Physically, they are much weaker than basic salamanders.)

This is basically what it says on the tin: Ignite Poison delivered to a single location via a (non-resistable) enchantment beam. The damage inflicted is greater at the same power compared to normal Ignite Poison, but making it non-smite-targeted is a considerable limitation in the player's favor, of course.

When the LoS attack spell code was cleaned up and merged, refrigeration damage when cast by monsters seems to have been unintentionally reduced (the power argument was used in two different fashions in the merged functions). This made Fannar's damage go from 3d10 to 3d6, and the Cocytus Serpent's from 3d15 to 3d7. This commit restores their old levels of damage.

This finishes some of the generalization made previously to this code to make it less player-centric and adds tracer-like checks to allow monsters to guess when it's worth casting (ie: will do more to their enemies than their allies).

A lot of the player damage code left over from when it could hurt the caster wasn't really suitable for a monster effect and so has been removed or changed. It can no longer destroy items in your inventory (including 100% of all poison ammo carried!) nor create flame clouds based on this. Damage for higher levels of poisoning has been greatly stepped down and poisoning no longer stacks with naturally poisonous physiology (ie: being a naga or kobold) in terms of damage inflicted on players.

I don't actually have a home in mind for this code directly, but I plan to use it as the base for a single-targeted version of this effect, and maybe it would be okay on player ghosts?

These are intended as the new top-tier lava monster, replacing and exceeding old salamanders. Their melee strikes create a ring of flame clouds surrounding their target's position (but not actually beneath their target) and their melee damage is considerable. Further, unlike their lesser cousins, their movement speed is high enough that even on land they are faster than average (and even faster than that in their native lava).

Unlike lesser salamanders, they deliberately do not spawn with reaching weapons, so that any player can melee them down without being forced to stand in a flame cloud, however the ring does synergize nicely with any other salamanders they might appear alongside them and poke at you from range. (For the benefit of allies, the firebrand has enough control over its flames to keep from placing them beneath non-resistant allies, but will happily place them under hostile creatures that are not its primary target).

Outside of Depths, I think they would also make a very suitable monster for Gehenna.

The difference in power between salamanders and the next-strongest lava creatures is immense (and lava fish and worms are so similar as to be nearly identical), leaving a potential threat gap that could be filled (and a new high end created in its place). Also, thematic association could allow them to introduce more variety in Snake's monster set at somewhere other than the top-end, provided they didn't hit quite so hard.

Salamanders recieve a considerable HD nerf, cutting their AF_FIRE damage considerably. Also, they no longer always recieve flame-branded weapons with decent plusses - the weapons are instead always unbranded (they already do fire damage in melee anyway), with only a chance of plusses. They will now never spawn with a bow and melee weapon at the same time (but the chance of a bow is somewhat increased and the bow is still flaming) and only with reaching weapons. They also recieve a small boost to their defenses and MR factor.

While I don't consider enchanters as problematic as many of the monsters I've revamped, the value of yet more sources of confusion is questionable and I think invis other risks being more obtrusive than the mechanical value it adds here (particularly when it will be used primarily upon melee monsters, many of whom will still be slow). Elf already has its early floors populated by a multitude of things that like going invisible on you.

Enchanters' role as a speed buffer for low tier naga bands is a valid one, but I am considering the same spell on a different rarer monster and wouldn't want it used twice in the same place. Early naga bands can be addressed in other ways (like more common use of naturally fast or ranged monsters).

As for ritualists themselves, they are esoteric mystics focusing around poison magic in ways that other naga do not. They possess virulence and OTR (as well as one slot of force lance for direct damage), enabling them to support other naga's poison attacks as well as be supported by them, with damage output that is hopefully suitable for stronger encounters of shallow floors and also deeper in a more supportive role.

While effective and apparently balanced as a player spell, when used against the player, OTR is underwhelming - in definite part due to player's greater hp, ready access to !curing, and the fact that players can kite with the spell while monsters will not. Overall it does little direct damage while potentially poisoning too heavily (though all this often amounts to is costing you a !curing after the battle is over).

With that in mind, I have rebalanced the effect against players in 3 ways:

1) It inflicts considerably more direct damage 2) It inflicts only half as much poisoning 3) The damage falloff by distance is greatly reduced for monster casters in general. (It made the effect too trivial if not engaged in melee with the caster, and monsters do not require any extra mechanisms to discourage engagement with the player)

Overall it should be be more threatening against players in an immediate sense, while being less likely to leave you in the deep red afterward.

Several effects were lasting much less time on monsters than intended and/or never wearing off with time at all. This includes mostly things likely to never be relevant (dimension anchor and retching), but also notably the -MR effect from ?vuln versus monsters. Due to what looks like confusing aut with turns, it lasted only 1/10th as long against monsters as players!

This is a hex whose effect is twofold. First, it multiplies the amount of poison already in the target's system (this cannot be resisted), then attempts to apply a level of poison vulnerability (which can be resisted via MR)

While the original version may have been conceptually interesting, it had multiple mechanical problems. Even putting aside the bugs in the implementation of monster static discharge, frying its allies when injured doesn't seem like a good mechanic to me, and the way static discharge jumps means that many messages are generated for every single event (for similar reasons I don't think it works very well as an active spell for them either). Also, shock's damage scaling meant it was basically harmless on a monster of this tier - a cantrip as best.

This commit attempts to take the central concepts of the original design and make it a more effective and workable monster. Shock serpents now passively gather charge when in combat. After multiple turns of building charge, they can unleash it as an unavoidable arc of lightning aimed at their primary target (and nearby allies, in the style of dazzling spray) which does substancial damage. However, injuring the shock serpent discharges ALL of the sustained charge as a (much weaker) reprisal effect. The idea is that the player will be encouraged to suffer through the reprisal to avoid a worse attack and that it might sometimes change target priorities in a large melee or affect retreat tactics employed.

In addition, I have replaced shock with a stronger electrical bolt styled after atomic eels. The code duplication involved here bugs me, but shocks if far too weak and lightning bolt too strong and the atomic eel bolt cannot just be made into a spell and given to both of them without reducing eel fire rate significantly.

Finally, they get slight hd and melee boost, and lose the poison resistant and poisonous corpses. So much of Snake already leaves poison corpses and it doesn't seem to me that there's much need for any poison association here.

Note that a great many numbers here are quite provisional, particularly charge rate and the power of lightning torrent itself.

I've been conservative with this functionality for the moment, and applied it mainly to cases where switching between weapons is critical to a monster's overall functioning. This includes satyrs and naga snipers (who are archers that spawn wielding a melee weapon and thus cannot even use their ranged focus at all if it happens to be cursed), spriggan assassins (who rely on using their blowguns), and Sonja (whose blowgun can I THINK start out cursed, which seems a shame). There are maybe a couple other things that could benefit from this, but it seems clear that archers shouldn't randomly be deprived of their ranged weapons on generation.

The exact method of simply uncursing whatever item is generated, after the fact, strikes me as somewhat hacky, but it is how vault code to generate uncursed items currently works and the alternative seems significantly more complex, so....

Remove both corona and slow from their spellset. The former doesn't do much, the latter already has a caster in the zone, and overall this differentiates them more from fauns as well as focusing on their unique spell: portal projectile. (It also raises their damage potential overall)

Also nudge up HD and hp, remove chance of sling (which does notably less damage).

Finally, I renamed them to something I consider a little less silly than 'marksnaga' (ie: Naga Sharpshooter), though if anyone is truly attached to the original, feel free to rename it back.

Base damage is increased a decent bit, which should hopefully make them a bit less harmless to things not purely relying on their mana. Speed is decreased somewhat (though they are still fast) to give vulnerable people a little more room to get away.

I removed the 'heal on mana drain' effect, since I'm not sure it really adds anything of substance to them, as their longevity can be increased via more hp and if they're draining that much mana from you, you have other problems already. I wouldn't be adverse to putting it back if anyone especially cares, though; I'm more neutral than opposed.

Also renamed from 'sapper snake' to 'mana viper'. I have to admit personal bias in not really liking the original name, but this is also something of a shout-out to the old and long-removed snake that used to call Snake its home.

The amount of mp lost to antimagic attacks was highly erratic, being based both on the melee damage inflicted as well as a large random range. This was additionally somewhat problematic from a design perspective as it was difficult to make an antimagic monster that inflicted reasonable damage without completely draining your mana pool in a hit or two.

AF_ANTIMAGIC now drains mp based on the attacker's HD instead of damage done (provided the attack does pass AC, like many other AFs), and the mp drain is more normalized, so the extreme highs and lows will happen less often. The idea is that some mp loss will happen more regularly, but this loss will be somewhat less spiky. Lom's melee might have gotten a buff, but probably he can handle that.

I didn't adjust how antimagic WEAPONS work, as those involve more questions of symmetry with the player, where damage inflicted might indeed be the better baseline for the severity of the antimagic applied, but possibly their mp drain versus players could be adjusted similarly, too.

Not only is doing so generally a complete waste of time, it's often directly counterproductive to the summoner, as it will erase monsters that have moved to engage the player and replace them with ones around the summoner (who is often further away, especially if the summons are fast).

For whatever reason, extra-stable footing doesn't apply to liquefied ground, so that part of the original rationale fails; the new replacement is partly motivated by my observation that in a lot of scenarios where marksnagas turn up, the rest of the nagas in the pack tend to block their lines of fire - so this helps make them effective even in those scenarios.

This is a variation of the implementation I've had floating around for a while (20f9716) updated for more modern Crawl.

Naga enchanters are a sort of naga shaman - they can confuse you, haste themselves and their allies, and cast Invisibility Other (a new spell which is exactly what it sounds like).

Marksnagas deal with ranged weaponry and cast Corona, Slow, and Leda's Liquefaction. (I'm not convinced the latter is the best idea, but nagas have stable footing - thus if, say, courtesy of a guardian serpent they're surrounding their foe, they have the edge in melee; plus they all can spit poison at the very least, and should be able to volley at a fleeing foe).

I can envision quite a few tactical combinations of abilities between the spell sets of these enemies, the reworked guardian serpents, and the garden variety nagas; this should hopefully make Snake less of a slog.

These are a mid-to-high-tier Snake enemy (at the moment), intended to be more interesting than the current variety of fast physical / venom damage plain snakes and slow but hard-hitting nagas.

They deal mainly electrical damage in one of three (or four) ways - directly through their bite, at a distance with Shock, or at melee range through Static Discharge - invoked by them directly or as a response to taking damage.

Tactical management of shock serpents could be interesting - hitting them when they're surrounded by enemies will damage those enemies courtesy of the discharge effect.

Much less sweeping than Swamp and Forest, understandably. This adds spriggan air mages and berserkers as mid-tier encounters, and defenders as rarer high-tier ones, as well as making a few other adjustments here and there. Deep trolls are rarer, flayed ghosts are somewhat more common, and modest changes to a few other things I felt were a bit too common or rarer.

(Defenders were added to the list twice with different ranges and weights. I am not sure how better to reconcile the fact that all weights in the OOD range are so incredibly low (and defenders make sensible solo vault spawns from this list) with wanting them to sometimes spawn OUTSIDE of vaults, as their band is a point of interest for them. Possibly it would make more sense if the scale for depths greater than 6 were not so different than depths 6 or below, but adjusting this would be a lot more work right now)

A similar edit as with Swamp: monsters from the forest dispersal are introduced and the weights of some others adjusted. Bats are far less common, hippogiffs are replaced with griffons increasingly by depth, high tier merfolk are much more common outside of Shoals:5 itself. Water nymphs are added as a mid-tier spawn, with rarer fauns as low ones and then even rarer satyrs deeper. Water elementals can spawn randomly to break up some of the monotony of filler spawns, along with an ocassional wind drake.

For a few reasons I am somewhat less pleased with this than the Swamps weights, potentially because Shoals had a larger band lacking in many meaningful encounters and with fewer things to fill it with. I expect there will be more changes to come in future.

This commit does some considerable refiguring of the Swamp population, working in the Forest refugees slated for it and making several other changes.

Shambling mangroves and smaller spriggan rider bands have been added as moderately rare midrange encounters, with spriggan druids and thorn hunters as rarer deep ones. Ravens are made much more common (now that hopefully they're a bit more meaningful). Vampire mosquitoes are less common, shadows replace hungry ghosts (and are more common), multiple incredibly weak monsters no longer show up on deep floors. Water monsters are much less frequent overall and eels removed, with thorn lotuses added (less common overall than in their original homes). And probably several other tweaks I have forgotten to mention here.

As always, such changes are provisional and will need to see real playtesting.

Pairing vapours with wisps is an idea that was tried a while back, and then canned due to the forest fires vapours were prone to starting. With that now made less of a problem (and vapours overall improved from their old state back then, too), I think it's worth trying again.

Not only are the absolutely massive explosions of steam created by flame clouds over water somewhat annoying to have to sit through whenever you (maybe inadvertently) cause them, but it looks like they were probably unintentional in the first place. The steam cloud's spread rate (in just this one context) is left unfilled at a default of -1. Of course, spread_rate is an unsigned 8-bit integer.... (it should be noted that steam's NORMAL spread rate is 22)

If you use wizmode, you can see that even a single flame cloud can produce steam at up to 15 or so spaces away from the original source, which is rather insane. I have reduced the spread rate to normal (and increased the generation rate just a touch), which I think produces far less intrusive effects.

I'm not fully sure of the numbers, which might need further adjusting, but combined with the last commit, I think it's a definite quality-of-life improvement in Swamp for both people being attacked by vapours and those using fire and lightning themselves.

This was mechanically somewhat problematic in Swamp, when vapours were prone to causing LoS-filling explosions of steam just by doing their normal thing, and players using lightning and fire attacks primarily tended to contend with the same issue a lot of the time as well.

Given that mangroves are actually notably less prone to wildfires than many trees (especially in such a watery environment!), just make them produce a shorter flame cloud instead of a full forest fire. I think this will probably play better in the branch they show up in.

I'm not sure this is really necessary and cannot operate the same as the player's in any case, since monsters don't really know how to stand still. Thus theirs will wear off even when stationary (though moving accelerates the process as they take damage).

It might just be simpler to make the monster bleed or something, instead of this extra code for an effect that will rarely happen or be meaningful (though manticores have already been suggested as a possible player summon several times, so....)

These were a fairly unnotable monster, especially so in Shoals (though usually barely worth noticing in D, either). They now fly (which one might expect from the wings, and helps them become stranded less frequently in Shoals), move at speed 8 instead of 7 and act at normal speed. Their melee is considerably improved, as well as the accuracy of their spikes.

The spikes get a new effect. When they hit the player and inflict damage, the barbed spikes become embedded in your body and will cause further damage with every step you move. Resting for a few turns will remove the spikes, but other actions will not (nor will thet wear off while asleep/ paralyzed/etc.). Moving will eventually cause them to snap off, but this is much less quick than resting (and incurs non-trivial damage during that length of time).

The idea is to create an impairment that limits the player primarily via damage and is overwise inobtrusive. If you are in no danger, then you can simply charge the manticore and accept the extra damage. But in more dicey situations, it makes running away not so automatically a correct answer and could hopefully cause tension between flight and standing your ground.

Numbers are provisional and will likely need further adjustment following playtesting.

Let blood scent trigger if blood would be spilled over ineligible squares

Most particularly this applies to water, when cannot be bloodied. But it seems curious that sharks have a gimmick that involves reacting to blood, when combat in their native terrain can never produce anyway. Since there are good reasons not to recolor water red all the time, instead merely trigger blood scent when blood would otherwise have been created, but do not bloody the square itself.

Something similar could arguably be done for Ignite Blood, though I am uncertain of the implications of creating massive clouds of steam whenever you fight over water.

It previously had flat power, regardless who was using it. The net effect of this change is that sirens become slightly harder to resist, mermaids stay the same, and the low-HD sirens/mermaids in that Sewer vault become much easier to resist.

Make sirens even more likely to prefer deep water than before (to the point of being willing to move past the player to reach some, when previously they never would if shallow was available closer to them). Given how key it is to their offense, it seems important to prioritize it further.

Also adjust siren pathfinding slightly so that they will attempt to move around the player instead of stopping in front of them, if you happen to bar their path.

Finally, remove siren's melee attack altogether. It almost never works anyway and was harmless even when it did. It is better not to give the illusion that she will actually hit something when she so rarely does, I think.

A long-acknowledged problem with sirens is that while their mesmerisation can be powerful and relevant when supported by dangerous allies, they are completely harmless on their own yet can still camp out where you can't reach them and prevent you from leaving as well. The solution I propose to these staring matches is to make lone sirens actually dangerous and so I am giving them a powerful and thematic form of offense: calling up the spirits of the drowned to inflict the same fate on their captive audience.

When a siren starts to sing, it starts a counter that will (after a short time) start to continuously call up drowned souls from nearby deep water. These drowned souls have very short duration and die upon hitting something, but their touch inflicts considerable AC-ignoring drowning damage.

Since mesmerisation can already be powerful in the presence of allies, said counter will not be incremented in the presence of more than a few HD worth of them (and thus sirens with existing support will not call up drowned souls). This ability is intended foremost to give threat to the many sirens one encounters WITHOUT any backup to speak of without making all others much more dangerous.

I think requiring deep water to perform this ability could work well with their already-existing behavior to pull the player towards this terrain and gives a powerful incentive to try and not let that happen.

Most of the numbers involved here are provisional, including rate of soul calling, damage of individual souls, number of allies required to inhibit using it, etc. The idea is that it should be quite dangerous on its own without making situations where a siren's presence is already dangerous far moreso, but nor should one or two harmless monsters prevent it outright.

Siren pulling is now irresistible if you are already mesmerized and happens passively each turn (without her needing to renew her song), but only triggers if the player did not themselves approach the siren that turn. (The idea is that this prevents you sometimes jumping multiple spaces in a single turn and makes the pulling behavior more consistent but also more powerful).

Mesmerisation only worked if the player can see the monster mesmerising or was already mesmerised by them previously, so this ends up merely reducing the frequency that invisible (but seen!) mermaids at low hp will mesmerise. And considering they have no way to go invisible on their own anyway....

Sirens will no longer pull you into positions that cannot see them (and thus break mesmerisation in the process) and will not be completely confounded by many apparently non-obstructing walls, but rather pull you forward along the beam path between your position and theirs (instead of only in the direction of the sign difference between your two positions, which might be occupied).

Sirens should now be less likely to voluntarily break LoS with a mesmerised player, either by stepping away or ducking around a corner. Hitting a siren will no longer sometimes cause it to start dancing or run off to the top-left of the map. Also sirens should more properly maintain a target lock on the player, even while moving away (this would affect ranged attacks if they had any).

Unfortunately, it seems there's no clear good way to go about fixing the fact that under almost no circumstances will a mesmerising siren actually use its melee attack. The best solution I could find causes the siren to oscillate back and forth around the spot it wants to stand, which I don't consider an improvement. But given that siren melee is pathetic and irrelevant anyway, I consider this relatively unimportant (and plan to give them something better to replace it anyway)

When a tidal change happened, sometimes large chunks of temp water would be outright removed (even when they were far from the shoreline), and without actually removing the terrain change marker (which caused bits of land that were curiously immune to being flooded again).

I have to admit that I don't entirely understand all the tidal code so it's possible this fix doesn't do exactly what I think it does, but it does seem to address the visible issue - temp water is preserved regardless of tidal movement, which continues to operate normally around it.

This power performs some of the same functions as waterport touch (forcing melee confrontations to be in range of waterstrike), without directly throwing the player around. Their new home will have plenty of water to use anyway, but this serves as a failsafe when lured onto land (and can also synergize with other nearby creatures).

While I still feel like the attack could create a number of interesting tactical problems, the mostly-irresistable player relocation was fairly unpopular, so let's try giving them something else instead.

Merfolk were the most common 'standard' monster in most of Shoals, but pretty underwhelming - similar in stats to an orc warrior and losing in melee against a lone elephant, when elephants themselves spawn in packs from a much earlier floor and aren't even major powerhouses then.

This boosts their damage, hd, and hp, as well as making sure they always actually spawn with a weapon. Mermaids are now also guaranteed a (lesser) weapon and get a melee damage boost. Neither is liable to be too much scarier, but hopefully just a little less ignorable.

(The size of bands involving merfolk were nudged down slightly in compensation, since the elite merfolk are actually dangerous)

Generally this is an overall power reduction, with a few other tweaks.

Faun and satyr hd and hp are reduced - notably the satyr hd reduction also cuts the power of their rouse effect and prevents it from affecting impalers. Fauns however also recieved a tiny melee buff and slightly better melee weapons.

Accounting for the much lower expected player MR when first encountering them, faun spells are diluted so that slow will be somewhat less common and confusion much less common. (The method this is accomplished is unpleasantly hacky, but without more fine-grained control of spell frequency within a single set, I am not sure how to reduce it low enough without removing it entirely). Satyr overall cast frequency is also somewhat reduced.

Faun bands are now a little smaller, and fauns and satyrs both have a 1 in 3 chance to spawn without a band, however their bands now have a chance of containing a single mermaid. Accompanying other monsters that can actually harm you will give mermaid mesmerize more of a chance to do work, and would a faun really turn away the company of such a charming maiden?

Don't flash the screen and print messages unless you can see the source square of the effect. Don't cast if all possible targets are already afraid (and don't reapply to already-feared targets, just as the player version already does). Reduce the duration against the player to something more sane.

Druids now have a 1 in 3 chance of coming with a small band of either plain spriggans or an ocassional rider. Riders themselves now only have a 1 in 3 chance of their band, and it is smaller. Shambling mangroves no longer can come with a druid (a hasted mangrove sounds excessive for a mid-tier Swamp encounter) but sometimes a single rider accompanies them instead.

Both monsters recieve some stat nerfs to themselves and thorn volley's scaling formula (though lesser than treants did, as thorn hunters were comparatively less scary in their original homes and intended for a higher-tier threat slot here than shambling mangroves).

Briar patches are made amphibious so that they can be spawned across water, and thorn hunters likewise gain the ability to swim, though at a reduced speed compared to their land movement.

I wouldn't mind seeing a 3rd option for what kind of fauna might be hiding in their foliage, but I'm not sure what a sensible choice might be (there seem to be few options that are both thematically plausible and mechanically reasonable).

In preparation for the Forest migration, treants have been replaced with their marshy cousins. Moving to a lower-level branch, there are nerfs all around (and more to come). They have lower HD, hp, damage, and AC, and also contain fewer wasps. However, they also lose their fire vulnerability and become amphibious, as suits their new waterlogged home.

Forest fires, Conjure Flame, and Ring of Flames now incur piety hits properly, and the piety hits for everything else are much harsher (you're probably going to get penance for trying to do anything fire-related).

They get a normal attack in addition to the bite; if they're used as spellcasting enemies, they can remove the effects of antimagic through their antimagic bite just as the player version can. This will probably be more relevant if/when there's a version of the enemy that can cast spells

Actually, this will be more relevant in general if/when they actually spawn somewhere (Swamp and/or Snake have been suggested for good candidates for this, probably moreso Swamp).

The relevant old commit is ab7eb6992d0672e1189193d82656b790ddd6dc9a; this is cleaned up and modernised a lot from its original implementation (mainly it has a tracer whereas the original implementation did not).

The new FoVM spell set is Venom Bolt, Poisonous Cloud, and Ignite Poison. This might benefit from some more adjustment - it's a spell set that can potentially generate a lot of collateral damage if you get too big of a swarm of nearby poisonous enemies; some other ideas I've had including replacing one of the two damage spells with Poison Arrow (one shot, one target) or Mephitic Cloud (low area of effect, can still be ignited semi-reliably).

Mostly, a lot of forest critters are being placed in Swamp/Snake (Sometimes with some nerfs for spawn level) and also several of the monsters were updated/revamped/replaced in those branches, also some new monster variants were added.

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It looks like the demonspawn-enemies branch was merged as well. Trunk of 24 hours ago was a lot different than trunk now. It's obviously not a crisis if we just go ahead and score this one normally but there's weirdness to it.

Still what the $#!+ with those labyrinth mini-vaults, I've never seen so many!

"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessaDid I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!

Okay so I just got the serpentine rune in the new Snake. (I thought we were supposed to stay up to date immediately so I did. Oh well definitely made Snake more interesting.)

In general there are fewer large groups of nagas, but the new guys and the new guardian serpent ability to blink nagas toward you (and often behind you) makes it more dangerous overall. On the whole I think Snake is going to be more fun than before—the Vaults redesign is a good analogy—but for the people in this particular forum, it might be hard to appreciate that until after the competition.

Only done it once, so take that into account. That disclaimer aside, first impressions and advice:

I had rElec, so the shocking serpents (sea snakes that mated with electric eels) weren't much of an issue. YMMV—fortunately they are pretty rare, at least based on my play through.

I also had a pip of rF, but I don't think the salamanders would have added much difficulty beyond what is already in there, even if I didn't have rF, to be honest.

Sharpshooters can be rough. They tend to come in small packs in Snake 3 and 4, and there will definitely be some scattered throughout 5. They know portal projectile. Also, unlike centaurs and yaktaurs, they are actually smart enough to continue using their bows/crossbows when you are next to them, so adjut your tactics accordingly. They can spawn with either bows or crossbows; all kinds of ammo brands can be flying your way (nota bene!), so be careful. My two closest calls in Snake (got down to about 30% health each time) were from unexpected Wiglaf who chased me into a greater naga, and from a sharpshooter who had silver bolts, which I didn't realize immediately—I had a few mutations and they took out big chunks of life. Fortunately dazzling spray works pretty well on sharpshooters.

In fact, I leaned on dazzling enemies a lot in Snake, and it worked extremely well. I mean, it did before too, but a lot of the new enemies' special attacks and gimmicks are disabled, or at least drastically reduced in effectiveness, if you get blind to stick.

Mages seem to haste up even more often; at least, from last time I remembered. And they seem stronger overall, though maybe it just felt that way due to the way they interacted with the new enemies and abilities.

Salamander mystics (I think that's what they were called) like to haste other, but otherwise I didn't find them noteworthy. Only fought a few of them the whole way through; they (as of now) have the ? glyph because a tile hasn't been implemented yet.

There was some new type of naga mystic (IIRC) that casts toxic radiance and supposedly has some ability called virulence that makes the poison attacks of nearby enemies more effective (*just* what Snake needs, right?). I generally found they weren't anything to write home about, either. I had rPois for Snake; presumably this just makes rPois even *more* of a necessity for Snake. However, possibly these naga mystics are more dangerous in conjunction with poison bolt-ers and greater naga's poison arrow, if their virulence ability buffs that, you should be wary. (Not sure if it does, didn't really come up this play through.)

Had to teleport a few times due to guardian serpents' blinking crap all over me. I'd say the guardian serpent buff and the sharpshooters are the biggest new dangers. Greater Nagas are still rough, but then they've always been.

Didn't find them that bad, they are fast and seem to have high EV. Or else it seems like magic doesn't hurt them as much—no idea if that's just in my head. Not too bad though, they hit you and drain mana, but don't do much damage. If you have a decent melee attack to resort to (and obviously you should by Snake, always, anyway), you should be fine. I killed 6 or 7, generally amongst some other enemies; I think one time they forced me into a retreat rather early in an encounter that I otherwise might have stayed and fought, but I was not in any real danger (granted, that's because I fled early).

For reference, my Dg started Snake at level 15 (almost 16), finished at level 17 with one-third of the way to 18.

Currently 150 health, 36 Magic, AC 19, EV 24, SH 12. Using a really nifty +7, +4 artifact falchion of electrocution with a couple of resistances on it, and a ring that has neg intelligence and rC-, but +9 damage (couldn't pass it up). Slightly lower HP, and only 18 AC, when I entered Snake.

Got a ring of wizardry, so I didn't get as much in spell levels as I otherwise would have—only 7 levels in conjuration, 5 in hexes. Nonetheless that was sufficient to dazzle greater nagas—or really, everything but mana vipers who seem to resist all sorts of magic attacks—very effectively. Dazzling spray is dope.

I had very good MR throughout, too, just so you know. Not sure whether, or how much, that helped. I did have haste castable, I used it more than I needed to (obviously, as that's the point of getting the spell), but there were three times when being fast felt pretty critical, four counting Wiglaf.

Good luck!

Last edited by and into on Wednesday, 29th January 2014, 06:19, edited 2 times in total.

Ughh. I'm glad to have gotten Spider and Swamp. DgCj is a pretty fun build. With the awesome Int, you don't miss the lack of a god so much, except for spell choice. I found Frost and Ice, so my path was chosen for me. The slow skilling is a PITA; up to XL17 and only now gotten Freezing Cloud online; have enough Necro for Dispel Undead, but no spell slots.

Found 6 !Beneficial Mutation, which has to be some kind of record. All and all, a fun game so far. I'm at the point now where boredom alternating with terror is a factor.

HenryFlower wrote:Ughh. I'm glad to have gotten Spider and Swamp. DgCj is a pretty fun build. With the awesome Int, you don't miss the lack of a god so much, except for spell choice. I found Frost and Ice, so my path was chosen for me. The slow skilling is a PITA; up to XL17 and only now gotten Freezing Cloud online; have enough Necro for Dispel Undead, but no spell slots.

Found 6 !Beneficial Mutation, which has to be some kind of record. All and all, a fun game so far. I'm at the point now where boredom alternating with terror is a factor.

Yeah, I had Snake and Shoals—good times. I'd say new Snake is getting closer to being on par with Shoals, though Shoals 5 still takes the cake. However as I had rPois, and didn't have access to renewable flying, I really didn't feel like screwing around with tides.

The depressed skill growth is a bit of a drag; but yeah, with some luck from the RNG, plus the good stats and health / mp growth, the lack of god hasn't been bothering me that much. I found 3 !Beneficial mutations myself, actually. Though that is also why those silver bolts hurt so damn much. One of those potions just gave me horns, but I got some nice black and rugged brown scales from the other two.

a - the +3,+3 Elemental Staff (weapon) {rElec rF++ rC++ MR++ AC+5} (You found it on level 8 of the Dungeon)

Haha, crazy unrand crew checking in. I've got both the singing sword and autumn katana, though you can probably guess which one I'm using, which feels pretty slick. I also found Iron Shot and a staff of earth without much hassle, and I've got rF++ on swap, so really I've just got to get to Zot and the game is mine. And maybe figure out if/how I can kill Antaeus.

Have to admit that overall I'm impressed at how far most of you are getting! Definitely expected a lot more quick splats. And cheibrodos, if you want to die sometime soon that'd be great. Just sayin'.

For playing online, in general the server closest to you geographically will be fastest. But keep in mind some servers have much higher traffic, so if lag is really bad maybe try a different, less-used server. I personally have few problems playing on cao.

Funny, I also had the elemental staff. Lost to a really dumb attempt to flee from some spriggans (I was hasted, but even so, they chipped away at me over time). Really should have been a won game. Should have used more heal wounds charges...

A major problem was the lack of aoe spells, I hadn't found any storms, and only had poison cloud. I probably should have memorized poison cloud, but I was holding out for some reason. Guess I can't set my sights on firestorm Ended up with 2 runes.

Is airstrike damage reduced by rElec? Looking at the morgue, I had switched to my staff of energy, and didn't have the elemental staff on...that could have been a big mistake. I never found a crystal ball of energy, which was another thing that was really holding me back.

No, I wandered around the level shouting, I have even casted shatter about 6 times just to make a lot of noise. He is nowhere.

Also:

Code:

93de46b | tenofswords | 2014-01-28 15:37:03 -0500

Antaeus buff: give him the new Flash Freeze.He may have had the scariest melee in the game, but anybody in extendedwould be able to run circles around him without him doing much, makinghim rather underwhelming for the lord of the already most boring Hell.

Flash Freeze, one of the Legendary Destruction spells, is a instant-hitline-of-fire beam with decent partially irresistable cold damage thatgives a status that both slows player movement for a short bitand blocks monsters from casting the spell again.

A perfect match, even if he still can't necessarily catch up to hastedcharacters; the slow and damage are serious enough with the ice fiendsand other jerks around most Cocytus:$ vaults.

diviton: I had the same (jackal pack). Was playing slowly and carefully, and it didn't work out. Don't worry so much, blame it on the non-seeded nature of the contest. Next time will certainly be better Who wants to play without god anyway?